Creepiest Threesome

Jeffie Dennis Melder may well be one of the most disgusting men ever to appear in this column.

Earlier this month, a courtroom heard that the Groveton tugboat operator coerced his wife, 31-year-old Shelly Renee Melder, into having a threesome with an eight-year-old boy. When she confided to a friend about what they had done, Jeffie Melder called a national hotline and tried to turn her in, thus vindicating himself. (On his ghost town of a Facebook page, Melder, 35, lists himself as "Separated.") Ironically, and thankfully, that genius move launched the investigation that ultimately brought both of the Melders down.

According to news station KTRE, the court heard other details about how Shelly Melder was in the habit of having sex with numerous men and women and beaming the proceedings via Webcam to the oceangoing tugboats where Jeffie worked.

Melder was convicted of three felonies in relation to the rape of the boy, and Trinity County district judge Robert Hill Trapp brought down the hammer.

Jeffie Melder got 60 years for a count apiece of aggravated sexual assault of a child and sexual performance of a child, and ten years for one count of indecency with a child. And then Trapp stacked all the sentences for a total term of 130 years. Melder will be eligible for parole in 2077.

Shelly Melder has also been convicted. Because she was coerced into the threesome, and because she testified against her husband, she is expected to serve ten years or less. Two of Melder's cousins testified against him, too; they claimed that his sexual behavior around them had been inappropriate.

A psychiatrist testified at the trial that the young victim now suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder. John Nova Lomax
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SPACED CITY

Partiers Blast SheriffUnfair arrests, they say.

Shawn and Dashawn Butler, the 19-year-old entrepreneurs arrested recently for criminal trespassing with no little fanfare for what Harris County deputies say was an unsanctioned attempt to put on a party on someone else's property in Huffman, say the allegations against them are bogus.

In a story so bizarre that it has the ring of truth because who could make this stuff up, Shawn told Hair Balls that he and his twin had an agreement with the owner of the property to put on the party in exchange for $150.

And that their negotiator in this deal was a 15-year-old friend of theirs who was also a friend of the owner's family. And that the whole thing started with a Craigslist ad offering the property for sale.

Also according to Shawn:

• They had the agreement of the property owner to cut the lock on the fence on his property because it wasn't supposed to be there. In fact, he told them to use bolt cutters.

• They had already had a party on that property a few weeks before and because they had done such a good job cleaning up and there had been no trouble, they were allowed back.

• It was Shawn's idea, not the Harris County Sheriff's Office's, for him to post on Facebook warning potential partygoers away once they'd been arrested and the second party was going to be shut down. The SO wanted to arrest everyone who showed up. Shawn argued that the "smart" people who checked in on Facebook should be warned and then the deputies could just arrest the "ignorant" ones who didn't read his Facebook page.

• The "No trespassing" signs that Channel 2 and other TV stations pointed out in their subsequent broadcasts as proof the Butler boys had no business there, had been placed there by Shawn and Dashawn and their ground crew.

"I live an hour away from the party. The officers assume I just randomly found a piece of land in Huffman and just randomly went up — which is not what happened," said Shawn, a community college student who hails from Pearland.

"We wanted to do parties just for fun. No alcohol, no drugs. Only thing provided is staging, lights, sound, tents, food," Shawn said. "What people bring to the parties and what people do, we can't stop that."

They held their first party on the same Huffman property on September 15, Shawn said. He has a six- to eight-person crew handling food, security and parking. They paid $150 for use of the land, and about 750 people showed up. Admission was free to girls before 11 p.m. and $10 each afterward, he said. Guys paid $10 before 11 and $15 each after.

"No law enforcement was called out. It ended around 4 a.m. We cleaned up," Shawn said. Having met all the terms of their original agreement, Shawn said the deal was made to hold a second party.

"The second party was supposed to be September 29, but it was raining that day and the cold front came in. So we pushed it back a week [to October 6]," he said. By that time, Humble ISD and the sheriff's department were on alert thanks to what was, at least in retrospect, a tactical error on the part of the Butler brothers.

Shawn and Dashawn had hired a professional photographer to videotape the first party. The video got more than 9,000 pageviews and came to the attention of the Humble ISD, which in turn contacted the sheriff's department.